Friday, September 04, 2009

Love and respect the faithless - 1 Corinthians 8

Here Paul talks about how some Christians converted from other faith, were still struggling in regards of those food being sacrificed to the idols. Of course in those days, God condems any form of idol worship, be it in Old Testament or New Testament. And any new converts will know well not to associate anything with the idols. So if the food was sacrificed to the idols before and seeing the Christians eating them, they are stumbled. Even though according to this chapter, idols are nothing, food sacrificed to idols are just normal food. But the new converts from those religions don't feel comfortable and felt stumbled. The older Christians know that the idols are nothing and the food is fine so they eat them without feeling much. However instead of rebuke the young Christians, Paul actually says the older Christians has wounded the young converts' weak conscience and have sinned against them. Paul says in such a situation when his strong faith has caused his brother to fall into sin, it's better for him to stop eating those meat.
I thought Paul probably wants the Christians to exercise love and caution when there's younger Christians around. We have to understand their weakness, background and put our shoes in them. We need to care and even take initiative to care and respect them, so that they can be open and even be educated of their new found faith. That's when they will learn and grow, their faith will be stronger.
I believe this is not just the case of Christianity but in other religions as well. I see some believers of other religions got stumbled, dumbfolded by other believers in the same religion. Within a same religion, if there's other practice or beliefs embraced by some but not all, seems like there's double standards. I wonder how long will this religion last. Even other than religions, even in the case of medicine, if one does not believe a certain medication works but the others do, that one person will be stumbled. But in the world today, who really cares of such details of another person. I'm amazed by the Bible, by how God cares of such details and make sure that our little faith do not get put out, but make sure that we all grow. This's just amazing!

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